If I were to read this book, it might improve my novel. I looked the book up because on page 73 of Spanish Literature: A Very Short Introduction, which I quite recommend, this novel is said to explore “second-generation ‘post-memories'” of the Civil War. I should read Sepharad, by the same author, which also appears to resemble in several ways the novel I am trying to write.

Other people can think up your academic books independently, but I had not thought they could also think up your novels; it is to be hoped that this Muñoz Molina person has not already executed my plans. I knew I was under the influence of Pedro Páramo, with the whispering voices, but being under the influence of texts one does not know about is the larger problem.

*

Muñoz Molina is from Úbeda, a town all made of stone in the province of Jaén. I have not been there since I was seven but I remember it very clearly. Úbeda has good ceramics and if I were to spend some weekends there late next month I could take a 40 hour course, paying 115 euros tuition which is amazingly inexpensive.

Secretos y Saberes

1. While writing here is an excellent exercise for my English style and for writing as such, it is bad for my style in Spanish. Therefore some posts may be in languages other than English.

2. Corybantic, rather anarchical and possibly Liangian, this blog is opposed to everything I find mean. It criticizes things you may hold dear. It resists authoritarianism and received ideas. It vaporizes Fascists.

3. This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.